‘We’re freaks,’ Cable whispers huskily.
‘This changes nothing,’ Alcatraz says.
‘What?’ Myra snaps.
‘We haven’t changed.’ Alcatraz looks at us one by one. ‘We’re still Reapers. We’re still family. They can’t take that away from us. We’re still going to do right by each other. Until we’re dirt and dust.’
Slowly, our collective anger dials back down. ‘Dirt and dust,’ we repeat, one by one.
‘So we go down here and we fight like hell,’ Alcatraz says. We cross our arms over our chests in salute, a tight lump in my throat. ‘Not for Harmony. For each other.’
There’s that familiar tightness in my gut as we drop out of orbit and into the planet’s gravity well. We plunge through a sky choked with oceans of boiling clouds. Spears of lightning crackle down. Sporadic rain spits in rapid bursts across the landscape. The friendly squadrons scream ahead of us. We shudder in their turbulence. A siren starts shrieking. White strobes slash through the blackness, showing snatches of restless Reapers stirring in their seats. The pilot announces we’re fast approaching our drop-point. I unbuckle and stand with the rest of Ghost, our helmets sliding down over our faces.
Technicians strap us into the drop tubes; a heavy frame clamps tight around my back, shoulders and chest, before I’m slotted into a cylinder. A human bullet in a chamber. My armoured body’s sheathed in metal; the space around me ringed with old-fashioned white and red lights. The stormtech’s burning through me like wildfire. I’m ready to tear out my weapons and start shredding Harvesters to pieces.
The interior flares with lights like glowing blood vessels. Warning icons blink up on my HUD. I’m suddenly spat out of the chamber and into the air. The wind screams past my helmet. The world’s a dark smudge. Rain hammers against my armour and faceplate. I straighten my arms and legs, activating my thrusters and burning towards the looming highrise and surrounding buildings.
Around me, fellow Reapers are lit up in golden outlines, nosediving through the storm, my fireteam in bright green. Long-range gunfire streaks skyward towards us. A Reaper next to me is blasted straight out of the sky, cooked alive in his own armour, careening as he’s sent spinning to earth.
In front of me, Ratchet yells down the commslink. He’s been hit. He’s alive, but his thrusters are dead and he’s spinning off-course. I grit my teeth as I push everything my armour’s got into full-throttle and charge after him. The sky spasms with lightning and streaks of red gunfire, shedding light on a rushing river beneath us. The ground slams up as I grab Ratchet around the waist, hook my body around his, and brake us both as hard as I can. I crank my shielding so hard I can see a blackness oozing out of my armour like ferro-fluid, cocooning me in an additional layer.
We hit the river hard enough that I black out for a second. My armour tightens around me, sealing against the water. The surface shimmers like mercury above me. Teeth gritted, I kick off the muddy banks, the stormtech lending me the energy to burst through the surface, hauling Ratchet with me. Vision swimming, I activate the emergency override key that Reapers only give to their fireteams. Ratchet’s armour unlocks and he pukes out a chestful of water then sprawls next to me. I help seal him back up in armour, extend a hand and haul him to his feet.
We’re just in time. Two Harvesters climb the hill, rifles already unshouldered and levelled in our faces. We run together, acting on pure, frantic terror, our bodies supercharged with fury, mud splattering under our boots. At this close proximity, I feel every round rippling against my shielding. A bullet grazes my helmet. I smash into the first Harvester with a loud crunch. His rifle goes off inches from my head, a scream of light in the dark. I break his arm over my shoulder and slam him so hard against the ground he bounces back up. I whip around to see Ratchet being shoved face-first in the muddy water, his visor smashed, suffocating. I tear the Harvester off my friend and he turns on me, slamming his helmet against mine. The world clangs and rattles as I crash backwards through the mud and the Harvester blasts me with a kind of military-grade electropole. My body shudders as I’m electrocuted. I can smell my body hair burning. The Harvest slips and staggers over in the mud and howling rain, electropole raised towards me. Dripping with mud, Ratchet leaps on the Harvester’s back, stabbing his blade hilt-deep between the Harvester’s shoulder blades. He screams, tottering sideways, Ratchet growling like a frenzied animal. I dive for the dropped handgun, mud spraying across my visor. Fingers numb, I fumble it upwards and blast a planet-sized hole in the Harvester’s throat. He splatters and dies in the mud with a wet gurgle. Ratchet swears, thrusting his combat knife in and out of the Harvest’s back.
‘Ratchet,’ I pant.
‘What!’ he growls, ripping the blade out and planting it down again.
‘I think we got him.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’
We take the time to retrieve our weapons and run for the rest of Ghost, the siege already well in progress. A tangle of platforms and runways lead to a scattering of soaring highrises that feed into the mainframe of the central building complex.
There’re no formations, no attack plans, no strategy in place. It’s little knots of chaos, exploding over into one big tangle of carnage. Space Battalion Reapers are smashing apart a cluster of Harvesters blocking the entrance to the compound. Harvesters perched up on a walkway pour volleys of gunfire down on Reapers hacking their way up a bottlenecked stairwell. A Drop Trooper’s head disappears, his legs following, plasma fire carving the rest of his fireteam up in burning chunks. Squadrons of gunships and fighter-ships are entangled in chaotic dogfights above us, railguns streaking in furious explosions and lighting
